Posts Categorized: Wellness and Balance

“Summer time and the living is easy”. That is the tune we all hope to sing in the summer, unfortunately this is not always the case. Balancing one’s personal life with professional responsibilities can become even more challenging when work loads and work pressures continue to turn on the heat! Here are my favorite tips…read more

I was engaged once. It was 1988 and in between a course of sweetbreads and lamb at the Millcroft Inn in Alton, Ontario, the blue-eyed guy across from me popped the question. I looked at the ring, and I looked at him, and I said, “yes”. In other words, I said (on the inside), “I…read more

How many times did you hit the snooze button this morning before you finally dragged yourself out from under the covers? C’mon, be honest. But let yourself snooze just one time and it quickly becomes a habit. Next thing you know, you’re sleeping so late that you have to skip breakfast. And then, the rest of your day is off track. I know it sounds cliché at this point, but breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. Let’s explore the reasons why.

I love to watch my little girls sleep. They are calm, full of possibility, and not asking me to change them for the 4th time that hour into another fairy, princess, or pirate costume. As I watch, I imagine what dramas, adventures, heartbreak, and careers (I am a career coach after all!) lie ahead for both of them and it’s hard to discern what my hopes are for them and what my actual expectations are.

Days, weeks, and months of leading a team can prove to be very exhausting. People are always asking things of you and while you love to give, the cycle of take-take-take can leave your well running dry.

A vacation is a great way to break out of that cycle and refresh your attitude. Think back to your last vacation. Did you feel relaxed, joyful, fulfilled? Did you gain a fresh perspective and perhaps return to work with an ignited flame of creativity?

It’s usually easy to spot: the nervous jitters as he talks about his most recent position, the disdain he is clearly trying to hide about his supervisor or colleagues, the glossing over of the actual job conclusion. By the time I ask, “ so what prompted you to leave” or “what brings you in today,” I can almost recite the words that always include “laid-off”, “let go”, “downsizing”, “bad manager”, etc. As a career coach, I encounter a myriad of clients who have a gap in their employment history. Typically these clients address this issue with me in one of two ways. They either shy away from the topic (think example above) to avoid mentioning it until half way through the appointment, after the resume review, or they bring it up immediately and we spend the better part of an hour talking about this event that has defined them for the past several months of the job search.

Being a stay at home mom has its perks – you don’t have to get dressed up, you can work out on your own schedule, and you don’t have to have the children’s lunch ready at 7 a.m. However, the most amazing and obvious benefit of being a stay at home mom is the opportunity to intimately know your children and to share all of the milestones of their young lives. No one can truly understand and love a child like their parent. Choosing to stay at home had its financial and career limiting consequences, but it’s a choice that I will never regret.

Being a stay at home mom however does not mean that you must put your brain or skills on hold. Especially in today’s modern world where there are countless ways for you to expand your horizons.

When it comes to being a working mom, I often cannot quite tell what exactly I feel so guilty about. Do I regret not having as much time as I would like with my girls? Or am I feeling badly about the fact that I like my job, that it satisfies a core part of my personality, and sometimes my day is actually physically easier when I am sitting at my desk? If the latter, what kind of mother does that make me?

I was late in the game with technology. While my friends and family were readily downloading apps and taking adorable vintage photos with Instagram, it took me years to embrace the smartphone. I also was slow to get excited by the DVR I nowadays swear by. I am now leaning on technology more and more because as a working mom of 2 toddlers I will take all the help I can get. Here are a few reasons why I encourage all of my mom clients to jump on the tech train and never look back.

As busy HR professionals we use the word focus in many ways, whether it be in terms of what project we need to focus on next, what the focus of our next meeting should be or where our overall focus should be to keep in line with strategy.

What if we find ourselves having trouble with focus in the more literal sense though? We have very full schedules to maintain, and at some point we may lose sight of what is at the center of our day and miss a cue. Here are some tips that I employ to keep my productivity up when I find myself having trouble zeroing in on the task at hand.